


Sœur?

by Spirit_Wolf



Series: The Romanoff Twins [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Twins, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, How the hell do I tag this, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), The Romanoff Twins, Tony Stark Has Issues, based on an instagram edit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 07:03:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spirit_Wolf/pseuds/Spirit_Wolf
Summary: An au set after civil war but IW doesn't happen and Natasha has a twin.





	Sœur?

**Author's Note:**

> All credit for the Romanoff twins goes to sammies.edits on Instagram

The Avengers have been avoiding everything public going on four months now. The press hasn't heard from Tony Stark since the original statement that the Rouges had committed federal crimes and anyone who sees them should report it immediately. It hurt Tony to stand in front of the journalists and photographers, cameras flashing and temporarily blinding him as he read off the offenses. He refuses to admit that his voice ever cracked when explaining Natasha's betrayal.

But now they're here; standing once again in the legendary Avengers tower. Steve with his beard and Natasha with her uncharacteristically short, blonde hair, reminding everyone what had happened. Bruce and Thor have been caught up, Bruce not even understanding why it had led to the melodramatic fist-fight at the airport. Thor didn't ask questions; Tony thinks that the god is still too focused on the loss of his, well, _everything_ (except Loki) to process what it meant.

It's too quiet. The tension hangs heavy and awkward over their heads, and they're all dreading the day when it inevitably becomes too much. Natasha and Wanda barely come out of their rooms, Steve basically sleeps in the gym, Vision hovers because the android doesn't know where his team stands anymore, Sam hasn't stopped by the tower at all, Clint and Scott disappeared immediately after the Rouges escaped, and T'challa and Bucky are back in Wakanda.

Tony, on the other hand, spends all of his time in the lab or at the bar. This has caused him and Pepper to go on another one of their breaks, Rhodey hasn't spoken to him in two weeks because he 'can't get his shit together', and FRIDAY is constantly trying to persuade him into choosing water instead, rattling off statistics so often that he considers muting her for at least a little while.

He's sitting in one of the chairs, brooding as he stares up at the tauntingly blank TV screen, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. He hasn't touched his phone in weeks because last time he had opened it there had been dozens of missed calls and voice mails that made him want to pull his hair out. "Fri, TV, please." His voice is rough; there's no one to talk to anymore.

The AI seems to hesitate, based on the bleeding silence that follows his request, "Sir, are you sure that is a good idea?" Tony narrows his eyes further, not answering the question like a child having a temper tantrum. Finally, the black screen flashes on and he lets his eyes process the reality show before speaking again, "Keyword search: Avengers, Rouges, Accords, Civil War, Barnes, Rogers, Stark." FRIDAY seems to hesitate again before the channels start flashing past his vision until it settles on one.

It's a blonde woman that has one of those news anchor voices that makes it sound like any minor inconvenience could cause the end of the world. He leans forward on to his knees once she finishes her last sentence.

"We haven't heard about any of the Avenger's since it was announced that the Rouges had come back to New York, taking their place back at Stark Tower. But now, there's a new image trending on social media of the previously incriminated Black Widow, walking down the street like it was any other day." Tony squints as the picture appears next to the woman's head, it can't be her. One, because the woman in the photo has red hair that touches below her shoulder blades. Two, because he would know if any of the rouges left the tower. (It's really not his fault that he has Fri keep tabs on them. It's really not.)

The news anchor continues, "She seems to be unaware of the cameras following her, but the ex-Avenger is specifically known for her ability to seemingly see everything surrounding her. So, what does this mean? Is she trying to disassociate herself with her superhero image? Is this the Avenger's way of introducing their selves back into the hearts of New York?" Tony waves his hand, and the TV blinks off; he's left staring at it uselessly, trying to piece the puzzle together and coming up empty-handed.

"Fri, call Nat down here." He can hear how bland and flat his voice sounds, but can't find it in himself to care.

It takes longer than it should for Natasha to get down to the common room; she probably interrogated the AI before deciding it was worth it to see what the billionaire wanted. Tony, while waiting, has migrated back to the bar and is pouring a glass of whiskey when she steps out of the elevator. He glances up at her arrival before quickly averting his eyes back to the drink on the counter. The sight of her blonde hair makes his stomach twist into knots.

He takes a sip, a large one, out of his glass before meeting her eyes. "So, what's with the Starbucks thing? I didn't even think you liked coffee. And I never really saw you as a caramel type of gal, so what gives?" Natasha fixes him with a cold stare; she doesn't move to turn away in dismissal though so he takes it as a win. "Anyway, I thought Banner got you into tea, hence the entire cabinet full of it that resides in my kitchen now. So, again, what gives?"

She cocks one hip out, tilts her head up in assessment before speaking, "What game are you playing, Stark?" Her words are as sharp as ever, and Tony has to hold back a wince.

"It's no game, Romanoff. How'd you get outta my tower without Fri telling me, did you bribe my AI? Hack her systems so well that she doesn't have the recordings in her memory? Also, where'd you get the wig?" Natasha's eyes are impassive, and Tony gave up on trying to read her years ago. He pours another glass.

"I never left the tower." She finally acknowledges his accusation, she's letting emotion show through her words now, but it's only confusion. Tony doesn't trust it.

"Listen, red. I'm not gonna be mad, but I'd prefer if you didn't lie about it. I just wanna know how you did it." Natasha crosses her arms, her eyes are swimming with some unknown emotion, just below the surface where he can't figure out what it is.

"Lying isn't a past time for me, Stark, and I'm not scared of you throwing a tantrum. I didn't leave the tower." Tony narrows his eyes past the rim of his glass; she doesn't flinch away at his glare.

"Fri, could you be a doll and turn the TV on, back to the news report from earlier?"

"Certainly, Sir." The TV flicks back on and rewinds till stopping on the news anchors face; he lets the droning of her voice fade into the background as he watches Natasha turn and process the image. Tony waves his hand when she moves onto a different story and decides to let the redhead have the first word.

"I don't know, Stark." Tony chokes back a scoff.

"That's a first." He retorts in a low mumble; she turns away from the TV to look at him.

"It's not me. I don't know who it is. I'll have Nick look into it." Natasha turns to go back to the elevator and Tony takes the few seconds needed to say something very not good.

"And what if it's a race of shapeshifters invading earth? Now that the Avengers are a broken mess, who's gonna save New York this time?" The elevator doors close behind her bleached head, and Tony throws back the rest of his drink.

\----------

Nat is sitting in the gym later; she kicked Steve out to give herself a little bit of privacy, but she doesn't pick up the phone until 4 AM. Her and Clint's timezones are different. The archer picks up midway through the second ring, and she can hear him running, a voice in the background yelling something. She stares at the wall, "You shouldn't have picked up if you were in the middle of a side-quest." She chides with a flat tone; Clint knows what she's doing anyway.

"I'm on a treadmill and Ant-Dick is being annoying," she hears a scoff before Clint continues, "what's up?" A cold draft from the vent above makes goosebumps rise on her arms, at least that's what she tells herself.

She opens her mouth, trying to be blunt about her thoughts; it doesn't work, she chokes back the barbed words and tries again, "There's another Natasha on the streets, and I don't know what to do about it." Less blunt maybe, still hard to push off the tip of her tongue.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Clint asks, and she can hear the treadmill powering down, she flicks her eyes towards the door. God, what would she do if someone heard her talking about this?

"Do you remember Ana?" Her low mumble causes it to go quiet for a long time. Either Clint is shooing Scott out of the room, or he's walking away. Finally, his voice crackles back into her ear, and she quickly puts together that he put himself on mute.

"Ana." There's a pause, "As in Anastasia? As in... dead twin sister?" Natasha folds her lips together and closes her eyes against the burn behind them.

"Yes. As in Anastasia." She whispers. She's alone, and no one's up, except for maybe Tony, but they're avoiding each other at the moment. It's dead silent on the other end, and the spy takes the time to breathe slowly, process her thoughts, wonder what the hell she's doing to herself thinking like this.

"What are you getting at Nat? You saying the Red Room somehow resurrected her after all these years?" He's being blunt on purpose, and she's thankful for that. Neither of them can be soft right now, not with what she's implying on hand.

"No. I don't know what I'm saying, Clint. But there's someone who looks just like me in New York, and I have no other explanation." She needs to stop treating this situation like a baby; no one's going to get hurt from this. (Except her. Her past is coming back to bite her in the ass, and it doesn't seem like it's going to work out very well.)

"Okay. Okay, it's fine, Nat. I'll dig around, see if they're other cases of doubles or if Hydra is trying to come back for vengeance. I'll work it out, call you back in a couple days. Okay?" He's setting her back on track. Straightening her thoughts, giving her support that even she knows she needs.

"Okay. Have a good day, arrow." It's quiet again; Clint's probably just figuring out what time it is on the other side of the world.

"Good night, widow." The call cuts off with a click, and Natasha blinks herself back from the brink of crying. She doesn't need to cry; this is nothing. (This is everything.)

\----------

Natasha finds herself in the lower levels with the more advanced equipment, surrounded by 1 and 0's, the sounds of keys being pressed rapidly, and blue maps of New York. Despite Clint's reassurance that he would figure it out, she still finds the need to do it herself. To figure out if Ana is still alive and if she is, _how_. But there's nothing. The news story managed to run the copycat to wherever she deems safe.

She's already hacked everything she can in Shield/Hydra's database from the date she joined. There's nothing about her sister. Her name is never mentioned on anything. It's like she never existed.

Which is what Natasha _wanted_. She wanted people to believe that she was alone; she was _always_ alone. They didn't need to know that there was a sore spot they could prod at. Ana wasn't supposed to be a human after Natasha became one. She died a weapon; she needs to stay a weapon.

Her phone rings, buzzing on the wooden surface of her desk. She glances at Clint's name, and anxiety ricochets around her lungs before she picks up.

"Hey." She needs to act okay, act passive. Mask falls off, replace it as fast as possible.

"There's nothing on doubles; no one else has copies running around. There's no sign of Hyrda coming back; Fury hasn't mentioned anything about rebuilding Shield. I don't know what to tell you, Nat."

"Tell me the truth, Barton." She spits out, glaring at the map of Manhattan, eyes scanning for something matching her signature.

"There's nothing else it can be, that I can think of at least. I've checked every possible-" His voice fades as a ping on the computer alerts of something. Her hand flies to the mouse, and she clicks frantically until finding the source.

"What the hell are you doing in East Bronx?" She mutters low to herself before remembering that Clint is still rambling.

"What? What are you doing, Nat?" The archer's tone says he's suspicious, but she's smart enough to know that he understands what she's doing.

"I'm gonna have to call you back, Clint." She hangs up and pockets her phone, glancing at the screen where the red dot is blinking innocently before turning and walking out of the room.

"Friday, tell Stark that I'm going for a walk." She stops by the gym and grabs a pair of guns and a blade just to be safe.

"Agent Romanoff, I'm obligated to ask where you're headed." Natasha doesn't have time for this; she gets to the elevator and punches the lobby button.

"Tell Stark to mind his own damned business and let me live my life." She grumbles back as the elevator makes its ascent.

"You know I can't do that, Agent Romanoff." Natasha huffs out a breath just to let the AI know that she doesn't fucking care what she can or can't do before answering.

"East Bronx."

\----------

It's early, 6 AM to be exact, and there aren't as many people as usual crowding the streets of the relatively peaceful part of New York. She has the map that was in Stark's tower blinking at her on her phone, and she can't stop glancing down at it every few seconds, terrified that the red dot is going to disappear.

She finds herself standing at the edge of a neighborhood, in front of a cardboard box for a house. The shingles on the roof are falling off, and the grass is dead and overgrown through the cracks of old sidewalk. The door's cracked open due to a busted hinge and a flickering light can be seen.

Natasha steels herself, tilts her chin up and doesn't move till her mind is clear enough to handle anything behind the door. The first step forward, her knee wobbles. The second, her hands start to shake. The third, her mind is as foggy as it was in the safety of the tower.

She knocks twice, and there's frantic scrambling from inside; the farthest thing from subtle panic. She pushes the door open, scared that it'll fall right off from the slightest pressure. What seems like a closet door slams shut at her entrance, there are papers scattered about the place, across tables and chairs, on the floor; probably from the scrambling.

The person hidden from view behind the door comes into her line of sight and Natasha _can't_.

_She can't, she can't, she can't._

She can't look back at her own face without seeing three perfect bullet holes punched through her chest, without seeing that look of understanding betrayal behind the same eyes that she sees in the mirror.

_It's too much, too much, too much._

Natasha blinks. So does Ana. They both stand still, shoulders tense and mouths drawn into equally thin lines. Anastasia makes the first move, a centimeter of a step forward. Natasha takes a 6-inch step back.

"Nat-" The redhead across from her, the _dead_ redhead, starts and Natasha shakes her head sharply.

" _Don't_. Don't," she pauses and turns her head away, "say anything." The assassin can feel the false hope in her twin's eyes without looking at her. She takes a deep breath, two, three, four, then looks back up, "You've gotten rusty, a hideout like this."

Ana looks surprised; it's fake, "I'm not hiding." Natasha scoffs, turns a full circle because she needs a break from looking into those eyes _. Her_ eyes.

"Then what are you doing?" Barbed. Guarded. Venomous. Natasha isn't hiding from her feelings. She's angry, hurt, confused. She lets the bad emotions rule out the good ones — relief, hope, _~~love~~_.

Ana looks around, her eyes taking in the rickety house, "Living." She shrugs like it's a simple thing.

"It doesn't look like it," Natasha grumbles. It really doesn't, the flickering lights, the cracked _everything_ , creaky floorboards, and dripping sink. The cardboard house doesn't seem like it's capable of holding a life within its walls. "Looks like a bad hideout to me."

"Yeah. Maybe. Looks like home to me." Natasha stares at her. _Home_ was never something they hoped for. _Home_ was a dream too far from the grimness of the Red Room.

"So, why didn- why haven't I heard from you? I know you didn't have to look for me, my face has been on the news for years, more now than ever. So, _why_? Why did I have to track you down?" Ana looks guilty, Nat will give her that, but she doesn't believe it.

"I'm sorry, Natasha. I _am_ sorry." God, they are tears in her eyes and Natasha has to look away again. "I had to learn how to be human," Human, not a weapon, Natasha gets it. "I would, I would've gotten in touch, but I couldn't. I couldn't go to the tower, to you, with the- with the things I had to deal with. I couldn't be a burden."

"How long have you been out? Been _alive_? Been in New York?" Natasha crosses her arms, cocks a hip out. It's an accusation; Ana flinches away from it.

"I've been out for a few years, 4 or 5 around now I think. I've never been dead. Been in New York for 2 and a half years." Natasha thinks it's unbelievable; it's not. It's a reasonable amount of time to figure out who you are, _what_ you are. It took Natasha longer.

The assassin breathes for a second before pulling her phone out of her pocket, "Stay here. I have to make a call. If I come back inside and see you gone, I'll hunt you down again, and there'll be no more talking." Ana nods. She looks surprised. She's not.

She taps on Tony's contact and steps out of the crumbling door as it rings, "So, what's in East Bronx?" Stark asks because he can never answer a call like a normal human being.

"My copycat." She replies clearly, ignoring the stab of pain at calling her that, she's her _twin_ for god's sake.

"Is that so? So, what was it? Her?" Natasha has to do it quick, get it over with. It's not a big deal; _Ana_ isn't a big deal.

"My twin." Her mouth pulls back like it's trying to pull the words back into her throat, but they're already out in the air, and she waits for whatever stupid retort Tony is planning.

"Yeah, well no shit, we already knew that part. I meant like, alien? Secret organization?" Natasha looks up; clouds are gathering in the morning sky even though she can't remember seeing rain on the forecast.

"No. I mean, as in she's my twin. Same DNA, shared the womb for nine months. Do I need to read the definition to you?" It's so quiet on the other line that Natasha checks to make sure that the call didn't get disconnected. It sounds like Ana is picking up the scattered papers from earlier, which Natasha had forgotten about.

"Was this a secret thing? Did you not know that you had a sister?" Tony's voice takes on a rare soft tone; he's obviously realized that this isn't a topic often discussed.

"I knew I had a sister; I thought she was dead." Tony exhales slowly and heavily, and Natasha imagines that he's rubbing the bridge of his nose, processing the unexpected information.

"Okay. Okay. What-what're your plans for her?" Natasha glances back at the door when a shadow falls onto the sidewalk next to her. Ana is standing there, leaning against the frame and honestly, Natasha expects the entire wall to fall apart beneath her weight. Ana looks at her calmly, arms crossed in a relaxed position.

"Take her back to the tower, ask more questions, try to figure out what happened. I can't say for sure what happens after that."

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was fun.
> 
> Criticism and opinions are always welcome.
> 
> Offical Tumblr and Instagram: spiritxwolf
> 
> Spirit_Wolf


End file.
